Hawking did not understand the big picture. He is an admirable figure, but he was not a good scientist.
We have to stick to the facts, limited as they are, and then expand on our views.
We should not start with saying that the universe is a reality that scientists can work with. It is not a scientific word. There is no framework called the universe. There are no universal units neatly making up the universe.
My advice? Stop undermining all these people of the past and embrace the true bigger picture. Declare each and every truth in its own setting, its own Completeness.
Don't push any axioms to the biggest level of all because there is no framework in which they fit.
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Write your name on an envelope, your address, city, country, planet Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, Universe, and hand it to the postal person.
The postal person will deliver the letter to the right person (in this case, that is you), but mentions that of the 8 items on the envelope only 7 items provided directions.
The word Universe did not provide the postal person any directions, none at all.
This way, you can see for yourself that the word Universe is non-functional at its own level. It is a collective word, like Mankind, Nature, Life, Balance. These are all words (and the word Universe) we understand with ease. Nothing to them. But they are not entities that scientists can work with. These are not scientific words.
Everything and Nothing are such Black&White terms. How can a scientist even use them? It is boloney.
Gravity is an enormous force in the universe, but not all motion is based on Gravity.
Gödel already provided Einstein an alternative to Spacetime, and Einstein agreed that it was correct by itself.
Scientists are so not paying attention. It is amazing how they mistake the omelet for the whole egg.
I like that you want to write, Paul, and you write well. But there is a limit. Once the truth is told, we do not need to investigate everything from every different angle. The truth is already known. We know what we know. We know what we cannot know. We know how to deal with one-time events.
